2014-03-27

MOGADISHU (Reuters) - A government official and three other people were killed on Saturday by a roadside bomb triggered by remote control in the Somali capital, witnesses and police said.

Ahmed Mohamud, district commissioner of the Mogadishu district of Hamar Jajab, was killed while driving in a part of the city controlled by the government and African Union peacekeepers.

"He died on the spot, two soldiers and a civilian woman also died there," police officer Abdi Hassan told Reuters.

The rebel group al Shabaab claimed responsibility for the attack which also left several people wounded.

"Our bombs unit was responsible for the bomb that killed a senior official of the infidel government," al Shabaab said in a statement.

Elsewhere, a male civilian and a policeman were killed in clashes at a site near the airport where the government began clearing the area this week to improve security, a resident said.

"We were living here since the fall of Siad Barre (Somalia's former ruler) and we don't know where to move now," Hussein ali Ahmed, one of the residents affected, told Reuters.

"We are outside with our children, the place is surrounded by government troops pulling down our homes," he added.

Somalia has had no effective government for 19 years and the the government has been promising an assault on the al Shabaab -- viewed by Washington as al Qaeda's proxy in the region -- to drive them out of the capital.